Although NBA DFS is notorious for “the blowout factor,” it’s also an issue in fantasy football. The first week of the season, Vegas had all games with single-digit spreads. Last week, we saw our first double-digit one with the Saints hosting the Buccaneers. This week, we have two even higher ones – the Patriots are -13.5 against the Jaguars and the Seahawks are -14.5 against the Bears.
Last week, I was an advocate of fading Drew Brees, not only because of his expected high ownership with the Saints being such huge favorites, but also because the blowout factor scared me. He didn’t have nearly the upside or even the floor of some other quarterbacks of the week like Brady or Roethlisberger. Of course, it’s easy to pat yourself on the back in hindsight and that’s not really my point here – the fact was something made me uneasy about rostering a QB in that spot.
And it doesn’t just go for QBs – we know the high correlation between a quarterback and his pass catchers, so if a QB is dangerous, it’s likely that his receivers will be as well. Thanks to our Trends tool, we can look at historical situations instead of just last week’s hindsight. Here’s the data for how each position has performed in the last year (in terms of Plus/Minus) in double-digit spread situations.
| Favorite | Dog | |
| QB | -2.64 | -1.10 |
| RB | 0.83 | -0.36 |
| WR | -0.34 | -0.74 |
| TE | -0.40 | -0.19 |
| D/ST | 2.79 | -1.31 |
On last night’s podcast, we talked about how crazy-high owned and how much of an auto-play in cash a Marshawn Lynch/Seahawks D/ST combination would be. We know that RBs and their D/STs are positively correlated, and going against an awful Bears defense and Jimmy Clausen on the road is about as good of a spot we’ll see this year in NFL DFS. And the data supports this – RBs and D/STs on heavy favorites have performed better than expected.
The interesting one to me and backed up my thinking is the data on quarterbacks here. The Plus/Minus on QBs that are double-digit favorites is really bad (-2.64). In fact, it’s bad enough and a large enough sample size in our database that I’m comfortable fading QBs in double-digit spread games all together, in both cash games and tournaments.
You also have to factor in ownership – a lot of DFS players use Vegas, but sometimes they misuse it. I think this could be an example of this. Drew Brees as a 10-point favorite at home (we already know about his home/road splits) against the lowly Bucs? There’s no way he could miss value! That’s probably the thinking of lot of people and if you combine going against the public high ownership plus the telling data here, I think it makes a lot of sense to look elsewhere for QBs in your cash and tournament lineups.
Of course, there are examples of QBs going crazy in this spot too – think Rodgers against the Falcons last year (30.9 fantasy points as a 13.5-point favorite) or Peyton against the Raiders last year (34.6 points as a 13-point favorite). However, I think the overall data shows that QBs as a whole are risky on either side of a potential blowout game. Could Russell Wilson hit value in the first half this week against the Bears? Sure, but I’m not sure if the data supports taking that risk, especially in cash games.
